Attendance Awareness Campaign Update
A project led by Attendance Works
September 18, 2019
S trong Attendance Needs a Team!
School Attendance Tools

To successfully improve attendance chronic absence must be incorporated into overall school improvement plans. Principals should organize a leadership team to:
  • monitor data to determine who is most affected
  • develop, implement, and galvanize support for a multi-tiered strategy
  • use data to understand and address common barrier to attendance
  • connect chronically absent students with needed supports
Teams should seek input from families, students and the community. This could be an existing team that can oversee these functions or a new group.  
 
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Attendance Works! 

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Here are a few resources for attendance teams: 

Attendance Works has revamped its self-assessment tool to promote schools taking a more integrated approach to improving attendance. The tool is designed to help school teams examine their operations. Let us know what you think of new self-assessment!  Download the tool. 

We have developed new calendars that can help you plan activities and events that will keep a focus on improving attendance all year long. You can customize the attendance plan for your community.  Find planning calendars for schools and districts. 

Reducing chronic absence fits nicely into the three-tiered reform systems being successfully implemented to reduce chronic absenteeism in schools and districts across the United States. School teams can use our blank three-tier pyramid to develop interventions and fill in gaps. Learn more about the three tiers of intervention and download the blank pyramid .
We Belong in School!

Alexis Knox-Miller, an assistant principal at a middle school in Colorado, is working to turn around her school's 50 percent chronic absence rate. The school is trying to identify all the obstacles preventing kids from coming to school, and by thinking about "how to layer the right supports for the right students," Knox-Miller writes. Read the full blog post from the Gates Foundation #PrincipalProject.
Share Your Story

We are looking for your Attendance Awareness Campaign stories and images that show how you engaged people around school attendance with the start of the new school year. Please send us your photos or graphics and a brief description of your activities using the form on our Attendance Awareness Campaign website, and we will post it! Learn more.
Superintendents Call to Action

The Attendance Awareness Campaign convening partners are calling on Superintendents across the country to sign on to the national Superintendents Call to Action. This year we will publish a press release listing all the Superintendents who have signed on by October 7, 2019. Find resources to help Superintendents make their efforts a success and a sample letter to invite your Superintendent to join the Call! Find out more.  
AAC Webinars

We had 2,196 individuals register for our webinar on September 10th!  Find the webinar recording, presentation slides, discussion guides and other resources from all four webinars on our website. Download these resources and watch with a group!
  • September 10:  A Place Where We Belong: Improving Conditions for Learning
  • August 8:  Open Doors: Create a Healthy School Climate
  • May 16:  Nurture Dreams: Ensure Students Feel Safe, Supported, Connected and Engaged
  • March 21:  Lay a Foundation: Engage Families to Address Chronic Absence in the Early Years
NEW! Facebook Frames

Announcing our new Attendance Awareness Picture Frames!  Find two new frames created by Attendance Works, using keywords chronic absence, chronic absenteeism, we belong in school or attendance awareness. Try It! 

Twitter Chat

We are co-hosting a Twitter Chat on Thursday, September 19, at 2-3 pm ET, with AAC partners MENTOR and SchoolHouse Connection on how caring adult relationships can help youth thrive and stay in school. We hope you will join us.  Participants can:
  • Use #SchoolEveryDay and #MentorIRL to follow and engage during the conversation!
  • Hosts and Co-Hosts Twitter Handles to Engage:
    • Attendance Works (@AttendanceWorks)
    • MENTOR (@MENTORnational)
    • SchoolHouse Connection (@SchoolHouseConn)
If you're new to Twitter, here are a few reminders:
  • All tweets must include the #SchoolEveryDay and #MentorIRL hashtags to be part of the Twitter chat stream.
  • Responses should include the question number you are referencing (A1, A2, etc.)
Partner Spotlight

MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership (MENTOR) is the unifying champion for expanding quality youth mentoring relationships in the United States. For more than 25 years, MENTOR has served the mentoring field by providing a public voice; developing and delivering resources to mentoring programs nationwide; and promoting quality for mentoring through evidence-based standards, innovative research and essential tools.

MENTOR's new guides, MENTOR's Guide to Youth Purpose and Social and Emotional Development in Early Adolescence, put a spotlight on social emotional learning (SEL) and helping youth explore purpose. Through research, case studies and recommendations, MENTOR and its group of experts offer insight into the opportunities and obstacles of helping youth strive and thrive.
Corporate Attendance Sponsors

We want to send a big thank you to this year's Attendance Awareness Corporate Sponsors. Find out more on our webpage. 

Attendance in the News

D.C. schools try to meet students where they live, Washington Post, September 15, 2019 


Spread the Word!

Reducing absence goes hand in hand with cultivating positive conditions for learning. A new @attendanceworks & @AIRInforms September Brief discusses how educators & policymakers can use chronic absence data to address inequities & improve student outcomes https://www.attendanceworks.org/using-chronic-absence-data-to-improve-conditions-for-learning/

Join @attendanceworks @MENTORnational @SchoolhouseConn on Thursday, 9/19 2pm - 3pm ET to chat about how caring adult relationships can help youth thrive and stay in school. #SchoolEveryDay #MentorIRL

We're building good attendance habits in our schools. How about you? bit.ly/1oqfID7  #SchoolEveryDay
Campaign Convening Partners
See the full list of Attendance Awareness Campaign partners here.
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